135 Million Dollars for a Painting?

In June, Ronald Lauder, the cosmetic heir, paid 135 million dollars for Gustave Klimt's 1907 portrait Adele Bloch-Bauer I. Only a month earlier, Pablo Picasso's Dora Maar Seated sold at Sotheby's auction house for 95.2 million dollars. Two years earlier, in May of 2004, Picasso's Boy with a Pipe (1905) sold at Sotheby's for 104 million dollars, the highest price ever paid at auction for a work of art. Prior to this, Christie's auction house held the record for highest price at auction, for Vincent Van Gogh's Portrait of Doctor Gachet, sold in 1990 for 82.5 million dollars. Even if you paid with Monopoly money you would need the bank of 8,917 board games for the Klimt, 6,288 board games for the first Picasso, 6,870 for the second, and 5,450 board games for the Van Gogh.

Obviously, only a handful of people can afford to purchase so many games of Monopoly, and even fewer can afford to spend actual cash. Nonetheless, more and more people have become interested in collecting art, especially at much lower and affordable levels. Because auction houses sell million and multimillion dollar works of art many feel these institutions are private and only serve the extremely wealthy. The truth is auction houses sell works of art at very reasonable prices, often only hundreds of dollars for a quality print, or perhaps a few thousands for a painting; they are also free and open to the public. According to ArtPrice.com "high-profile millionaire lots represent only 0.2% of transactions. The bulk of the market is much more affordable: 83% of lots sold at auction in 2005 were knocked down for less than $ 10,000 and 56% for less than $ 2,000.1" 

But how does one begin to collect, even at the lower levels?